[Footnote 1: "I own the late encroachments upon my constitution made me
willing to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would
rest for the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by
the Father of all mercy; and for the other (though indeed a trifle, yet
a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour of a
sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every
short-sighted and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious
reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light," &c.--_Let. cxx._
to Mr. W.--WARBURTON.]
[Footnote 2: "I also give and bequeath to the said Mr. Warburton, the
property of all such of my works already printed as he hath written or
shall write commentaries or notes upon, and which I have not otherwise
disposed of or alienated; and as he shall publish without future
alterations."--_His Last Will and Testament._--WARBURTON.]
[Footnote 3: A subscription would have been simply a petition from
Warburton to the public, soliciting them to increase the value of the
legacy bequeathed him by Pope.]
[Footnote 4: The engravings were execrable; the type and paper good, but
not extraordinary. The outlay upon the edition, for which Warburton
takes credit as for a munificent act, was a common-place commercial
transaction, with the certainty of a large return.]
[Footnote 5: The corrections are few and trivial. The account which
Warburton gives of the novelties in his edition is from first to last
exaggerated.]
[Footnote 6: The only restored lines which improve the orthodoxy of the
Essay on Man relate to a future state.]
[Footnote 7: Either Warburton had never heard of Madame de Sevigne's
letters, or what is more likely, he was unable to taste their charm.
Their delicate graces, and native liveliness, would have been lost upon
the man who thought that Pope's artificial epistles were "true models of
familiar" letters.]
[Footnote 8: The assertion that the copies had not been published is
unaccountable. Every line of them had been published twice over by Pope
in his lifetime, and all but two or three pages, had been published
again and again.]
[Footnote 9:
A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod,
An honest man's the noblest work of God.--WARBURTON.]
[Footnote 10: It will be printed in the same form with this, and every
future edition of his works, so as to make a part of them.--WARBURTON.
The Life which Warburton promised with such solemn pomp was never
written and he was content to assist Ruffhead in his feeble
compilation.]
[Footnote 11: Warburton intimates that Pope's only faults grew out of
his credulous belief in "the specious appearance of virtue," which was a
sarcasm directed against those friends of Pope who were the enemies of
Warburton.]
[Footnote 12: The demand of Warburton was not for a truce on the day of
Pope's funeral, which took place seven years before. He insisted that
because Pope was dead no one should ever again question his title to be
called "good." Neither Pope nor Warburton was accustomed to spare dead
men, and the claim for exemption was specially inconsistent in the
preface to works which were full of bitter attacks upon both living and
dead. Warburton was to go on circulating Pope's venom, and any victim
who retaliated was to be pronounced "sacrilegious," "a scandal even to
barbarians," and worthy to be "rewarded with execration and a gibbet."]
[Footnote 13: Warburton was a fortunate author. Though he published a
host of paradoxical notions, his opponents, if we are to trust his
repeated assertions, were always fools and knaves.]